The Shaggy Maine is just one of the many truly delicious treats one can find while roaming around in B.C.'s great outdoors. Try frying with some butter onions and garlic. Identifying this mushroom can be fairly easy especially if you wait for it to turn into a puddle of ink, but by this point it is too late to consider for the dinner menu. As with all wild edibles we recommend buying yourself a field guide to mushrooms before attempting to tap into this wild source of nutrition.

Identifying features

A whitish cap with off-white to brownish shaggy scales, cone shaped cap that turns into a black tar like substance as the mushroom ages. The long stem is the only thing left standing as this mushroom melts into a puddle of ink with age. If you are going to eat it, you must get at it before this occurs.

-Cap is anywhere from 3-5cm wide and 4-15cm. tall.

-Gills are free and very crowded.

-Stalk is 6-20cm long and 1-2cm thick, white in color, bulbous in shape and hollow.

-This mushroom has a partial veil and when the cap begins to open it leaves a ring at the base of the stem.

-The spore print for this mushroom is black.

This mushroom tastes delicious and can be found scattered to clustered in grass, wood chips, and dense soil from May to June, September to October, and again from November to January in Southeastern regions of North America. I have seen this mushroom exploding through pavement on the side of the road while strolling along to go fishing in the Haida Gwaii.